Eugene
In the second post on this blog I briefly introduced you all to Eugene, Alex’s older brother. Now I’m going to share a letter from him. Eugene fled Italy after being imprisoned until WWII broke out. He was on one the boats that left Europe and was stopped in Cuba for months before being allowed to enter the United States. After only a short time in the country he was enlisted in the Army and sent back to Europe to fight in the war. In this letter Eugene writes to Alex from a training camp in Oklahoma.
The letter is brief but demonstrates that Eugene feels he can relate directly to Alex’s military service. I will expand on their relationship in a future post. In this letter Eugene asks for a photo of Alex, which I find touching. One question that comes to mind is why they are writing to each other in English. Was this required by the government for censorship purposes? Their location is not a secret yet, and I have other letters that are written in Hungarian, so I am curious.
The letter ends with love to Joy, is this referring to Adrienne (whose middle name is Joy)? This short letter opens up a lot of questions.
September 24, 1943
Dear Alex,
Received your card and am glad to hear that Navy life agrees with you. I wish you don’t change opinion later on… You didn’t say much but I guess that you find yourself at your basic training station, learning how to march at “hop, hot, hip, how” etc… You don’t have to tell me about that; I know all that stuff by heart. You won’t have to write me about your 1st sergeant either. I know that he is a S. of a B. They all are… you can write me of everything else and also may send me a picture of you. I don’t doubt you took one by now.
Of myself only that I’m well. After ___ we went throu [sic] a fast and intensive preparedness and conditioning. We are throu [sic] it, and all set… Don’t say anything ____; They will have time to convey after it happened. Pauline was supposed to come here but considering the situation, she won’t.
Just go a letter from Mom. Everything ok.
Love to Joy, Silvia and to you,
Eugene
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Brooklyn In Love and At War by Molly Rosner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Brooklyn in Love and at War 
Hello Molly! Trying to reach you in a few ways and came across this most interesting letter written by my grandfather Eugene! Would love to connect and hear more about Hello Molly! Trying to reach you in a few ways and came across this most interesting letter written by my grandfather Eugene! Would love to connect and hear more about your research into the Rosner family and specifically the connection with Eugene.